'Hybrid': Dreams of Greatness in Breeds of Corn

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: April 3, 2001

Monteith McCollum's documentary feature "Hybrid" is an acquired taste but worth the effort. It's a film that rejects storytelling convention and delivers a precise look at its subject, a rough-hewn farmer named Milford Beeghly and his determination to cross-breed varieties of corn. "Hybrid," which is being shown tonight at 9 and tomorrow at 6 p.m. as part of the New Directors/ New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art, vibrates with sensitivity to the material.

The film won the grand prize for best feature at the 2001 Slamdance Film Festival, where the jury obviously responded to the director's melding of texture and technique. Allow yourself to give in to Mr. McCollum's jagged ruminations and you will, too, since "Hybrid" is like a fever dream that's both discursive and digressive; it takes us inside the director's head as it incorporates time-lapse photography, interviews and found film on Beeghly's life and achievements.

The drive of Beeghly — the filmmaker's farmer grandfather, who recently died at the age of 102 — to mix and match strains of corn to create the best new type is one of the most unlikely subjects for a film. But you come through "Hybrid" feeling as if you've gained an insight into one man's obsession and into the filmmaker's own feelings about his family and, eventually, about movies.

Mr. McCollum treats Beeghly, with his all-American vaudevillian personality, like a colossus. With his reedy voice and deep-focus concentration, the farmer grabs center stage with casual power, the intensity of the true eccentric. He has the weathered look that Grant Wood popularized, even when we see him as a robust younger man, his barrel- chested torso casting a shadow as commanding as a grain silo's, hawking his daring new seed on television.

The television spots starring this titan of the field — crude black-and- white treasures in which he sold the world on his brave new world of crops — deserve to be preserved in the Museum of Television and Radio. Their presence in the film alone explains why Mr. McCollum thought there was a film in his grandfather's life.

"Hybrid" takes on a fuller resonance because of the current fears about the harm that might be done by genetically engineered crops. The peculiarities of Beeghly's pursuit are made clear when the physiological phenomenon of corn is explained in openly sexual terms. Some of the innuendo comes with nudges heavy enough to earn "Hybrid" assault charges. In the last 20 minutes or so, the film feels attenuated, as if it's still casting about for its theme, a theme that it provides in its first 20 minutes.

But corn turns out to be such a sensual and bewitching presence that we understand why it demanded so much of Beeghly's attention. And why his children suffered because of the place that corn occupied in his life; he ignored them so that he could keep digging for just the right blend of attributes for his stalks. It's also evident why "Hybrid" consumed six years of Mr. McCollum's life. He wants to understand what drove his grandfather, and in the process he has come up with a tricky and tremendous film that examines what work means to the soul: a topic that is particularly American.

HYBRID

Produced and directed by Monteith McCollum; directors of photography, Mr. McCollum, Ariana Gerstein, Mike Jarmon and Vadim Pezner; edited by Ms. Gerstein; music by Mr. McCollum. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is not rated. Shown tonight at 9 and tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, as part of the 30th New Directors/New Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the department of film of the Museum of Modern Art.